Pharmaceuticals company GlaxoSmithKline has appointed Cardano as investment adviser to assets worth £10 billion owned by its final salary pension scheme.

Cardano, an Anglo-Dutch investment consultant, is taking over the contract from Aon Hewitt, which confirmed the loss, although it added that it had retained some actuarial work.

Cardano’s appointment follows the departure of GSK’s former pension, investment and risk director Martin Mannion, who joined John Lewis Partnership as its head of trustee services in May 2013, according to his LinkedIn account.

Mark Ashworth, chair of trustees at GSK, said in a statement: “We were extremely impressed with Cardano’s confident approach and their focus on helping us to improve, while further stabilising our funding ratio through the effective management of assets against liabilities.”

Kerrin Rosenberg, Cardano chief executive, used to work for Hewitt Associates, a predecessor company to Aon Hewitt. But Richard Dowell, Cardano’s head of clients, said Rosenberg had not directly worked on the account. He said GSK wanted input to improve its funding ratio.

Cardano was voted 2013 best fiduciary manager in the UK by a Financial News judging panel last year. Performance data released by Cardano said its fiduciary product beat its liability benchmark by 2.3 percentage points a year over the five years to June.

GSK has decided to continue calling the final investment shots, by using Cardano as an adviser rather than as a fiduciary manager.

The £10 billion mandate will push up the value of Cardano’s advisory contracts to £40 billion. It has a further £10 billion in fiduciary contracts, where a consultant would make the final investment decisions for a pension scheme.

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GSK said: "GSK and the pension plan trustees regularly review the relationships with advisors across all business areas. This appointment by the plan trustees followed a scheduled review and a competitive tender process."